The Macintosh Quadra 660AV, originally sold as the Macintosh Centris 660AV, is a

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

designed, manufactured and sold by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

from July 1993 to September 1994. It was introduced alongside the

Quadra 840AV The Macintosh Quadra 840AV is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from July 1993 to July 1994. It was introduced alongside the Centris 660AV, where "AV" signifies audiovisual capabilities, such as video input ...

; the "AV" after both model numbers signifies video input and output capabilities and enhanced audio. It was rebranded from Centris to Quadra in September 1993 without any actual internal changes. The 660AV was discontinued a few months after the introduction of the Power Macintosh 6100/60AV. Apple sold a Power Macintosh Upgrade Card that upgrades the 660AV to match the 6100/60AV's specifications for . This and the Quadra 630 were positioned for users who were not ready to move to PowerPC.

Hardware

The 660AV uses the

pizza box form factor In computing, a pizza box is a style of case design for desktop computers or network switches. Pizza box cases tend to be wide and flat, normally in height, resembling pizza delivery boxes and thus the name. This is in contrast to a tower sy ...

of the earlier Centris 610. The 660AV has a full

Motorola 68040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola ...

instead of the 610's FPU-less

68LC040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola ...

. Thanks to the SCSI direct-memory access chip and the SCSI Manager software, the 660AV outperformed the discontinued

Quadra 700 The Macintosh Quadra 700 is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from October 1991 to March 1993. It was introduced alongside the Quadra 900 as the first computers in the Quadra series, using the Motorola 68040 ...

(sharing the same 25 MHz 68040) and managed to match the Quadra 950 (despite having the faster 33 MHz 68040) in a few tests. Like the 840AV, the 660AV features video input/output capability and an onboard

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

3210

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...

(here clocked at 55 MHz, compared to the faster variant in the 840AV clocked at 66.7 MHz) to make the video handling less of a burden on the CPU. The 660AV is the first Macintosh to include

GeoPort GeoPort is a serial data system used on some models of the Apple Macintosh that could be externally clocked to run at a 2 megabit per second data rate. GeoPort slightly modified the existing Mac serial port pins to allow the computer's internal ...

; an optional GeoPort Telecom Adapter enables fax and modem capabilities. Some of the earliest Centris 660AVs have the older auto-inject floppy drive opening similar to the 610, but most of the Centris models and all of the Quadra models have a drive similar to the Power Macintosh 6100, lacking the auto-inject feature. These models have a deep round indentation at the center of the floppy drive slot to make it possible to fully insert the disk. The Quadra AV Macs introduced a new universal ROM (codenamed SuperMario) that would later be used in all PowerPC systems. It includes SCSI Manager 4.3 and Sound Manager 3.0. It also is "vectorized", making it easier to patch.

Models

Introduced July 29, 1993: * Macintosh Centris 660AV Introduced October 21, 1993: * Macintosh Quadra 660AV

Reception

Jonathan Chevreau of the ''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper and the flagship publication of the American-owned Postmedia Network. It is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.

'' said on August 7, 1993, that the

and Centris 660AV were the next most interesting multimedia computers behind the new

SGI Indy The Indy, code-named "Guinness", is a low-end multimedia workstation introduced on July 12, 1993 by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). SGI developed, manufactured, and marketed Indy as the lowest end of its product line, for computer-aided des ...

, putting Apple among the forefront of the birth of the major industry of desktop multimedia. ''

Byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

'' magazine said in September 1993 that

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

and

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

were trailblazers by setting audio and video input as default features of these two Macintosh and of the

Indy Indy may refer to: Computing and technology *Indy (software), used for Internet access to music *Internet Direct, or "Indy", a software library * SGI Indy, a computer workstation Periodicals *''The Indy'', shorthand for newspapers that include ...

desktop PCs, which "could change the way businesspeople communicate".

References

External links

Centris 660av (Quadra 660AV)
at Low End Mac

an

at EveryMac.com {{Apple hardware before 1998 660AV 660AV Quadra 660AV Quadra 660AV Computer-related introductions in 1993 Products and services discontinued in 1994